This is a great chart

This is a great chart

Originally shared by Ninja On Rye

It was National Science Week in Australia earlier this month, and I attended the informative and entertaining State of the Universe VI public lecture at Swinburne University. There was some discussion on the elements and the formation of matter that particularly piqued my curiosity – which elements come from where? And what are the proportions of those elements here on Earth?

The lovely chart below answers that first question.

23 replies on “This is a great chart”

  1. A.V. Ahana It is one of the theories of how our universe formed from the expansion of an infinitely dense, and very hot “something” that as it expanded it formed subatomic particles, or matter and antimatter. This stuff then formed atoms like hydrogen, then stars and galaxies, and as stars grew old many formed elements by fusion, first helium, down to iron which would no longer fuse. Many stars exploded forming more complex elements which make up the planets in solar systems and eventually us. We are made of the remnants of exploded stars or supernovas.

    The term Big Bang comes from the fact that the universe seemed to explode from that mysterious hot and super dense singularity. There are other words for it like the Diaspora (which is Greek for scattering or separating), but mainly the Big Bang is the most popular.

    Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article on the Big Bang.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

    I hope that helps some.

  2. A.V. Ahana I’ve taught physics labs in college but only as a Teaching Assistant. I am an electrical engineer with lots of programming of computers experience. So, no, I can’t say that I’m a professor at a university. I just love nature and science.

    Are you in school now?

  3. Ved Asish here is a link about supernovas (also spelled supernovae) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova

    And here is an excerpt from that entry:

    “During maximum brightness, the total equivalent radiant energies produced by supernovae may briefly outshine an entire output of a typical galaxy and emit energies equal to that created over the lifetime of any solar-like star.[4] Such extreme catastrophes may also expel much, if not all, of its stellar material away from the star,[5] at velocities up to 30,000 km/s or 10% of the speed of light. This drives an expanding and fast-moving shock wave[6] into the surrounding interstellar medium, and in turn, sweeping up an expanding shell of gas and dust, which is observed as a supernova remnant. Supernovae create, fuse and eject the bulk of the chemical elements produced by nucleosynthesis.[7] Supernovae play a significant role in enriching the interstellar medium with the heavier atomic mass chemical elements.[8] Furthermore, the expanding shock waves from supernova explosions can trigger the formation of new stars.[9][10] Supernova remnants are expected to accelerate a large fraction of galactic primary cosmic rays, but direct evidence for cosmic ray production was found only in a few of them so far.[11] They are also potentially strong galactic sources of gravitational waves.[12]

    Theoretical studies of many supernovae indicate that most are triggered by one of two basic mechanisms: the sudden re-ignition of nuclear fusion in a degenerate star or the sudden gravitational collapse of a massive star’s core. In the first instance, a degenerate white dwarf may accumulate sufficient material from a binary companion, either through accretion or via a merger, to raise its core temperature enough to trigger runaway nuclear fusion, completely disrupting the star. In the second case, the core of a massive star may undergo sudden gravitational collapse, releasing gravitational potential energy as a supernova. While some observed supernovae are more complex than these two simplified theories, the astrophysical collapse mechanics have been established and accepted by most astronomers for some time.”

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